TU

Yesterday we went to church.  It was nice.  We broke up into small groups that we'll keep for when we go to the churches.  The group I was in, we went to Lukas Geiminde.  It was really nice.  We started off singing "Come, Now is the Time to Worship" in German.  It was really cool to sing songs that I knew in German.  The sermon was about being fruitful in the spirit of God.  They had a translator who we could listen to with headsets.  After church, we went to the American Cafe for lunch.  It was ok.  People must think that as Americans we're either New Yorkers or Californians.  After that we had a free day, so some of us went to the Tiergarten and played ultimate frisbee.  It was really a lot of fun and great bonding time.  We played for about an hour before we came back and went to dinner by our class.  The majority of the students on the trip are seniors so we broke up into 2 senior groups for dinner.  It was nice to be in a smaller group with people closer to my age.

This morning, I felt drained and tired.  I didn't sleep that well and didn't really get a chance to have a great quiet time this morning with people being noisy and me talking with Eric and Kenny, so I was running a little on empty.  On our way to TU, I spent some time in prayer and started to feel refreshed and better.  It's times like these that I remember how much God's spirit is the living water.  It also reminds of me how important it is to start off my day with Him, much like the intro to the dc Talk song "Day by Day".

Today after our quiet times and devotional, we went to our final campus which for me was Technice Universitaet.  TU is the big science university in Berlin, it has a lot of engineering students and math students.  Austin and I talked with a Muslim guy about faith for about 10 minutes.  He wasn't very confident in his english so he kept most of his answers short and simple.  He seemed content with staying Muslim and not learning more about Christ.  That was the closest we've come to sharing the gospel so far, but it's only been a week and I know God will do something with whatever it is that we do for Him.  I'm doing my best not to get discouraged.  I need to remember that my hope is in Him and His power not in how effective and beautiful my words are, because they're gifts He gave me and I can only show them His love for me; God's the one who ultimately does all the work, He just uses those of us willing to serve.

I started reading Tim Keller's The Reason For God.  It's really good.  It kind of reminds me of Case for a Creator except with more philosophical/theological arguments.  It's one of the books that Crusade has given us to read this summer.  I'm sure I won't finish it while I'm here since I'm also reading Fireseeds and The Road, but hopefully I continue reading when I come home.

The ref who called the USA-Slovenia game is no longer reffing any World Cup games.  That's probably smart.  He did a pretty poor job.